Toucan Gallery Review

Functional Considerations:

• The gallery has plenty of room to show the work and for its patrons to navigate the space without feeling confined. 
• The layout of the gallery is effective, By having the art on display in the front and the frame shop in the back it keeps the gallery owners on the main floor while they work, but also away from the works themselves

Formal Considerations

• The typography I noticed on the works that were for sale were hand written tags, which could be bad if the hand writing was illegible, but it gives it a hand made crafty feel which is a popular aesthetic in Montana.
• The works seem to be grouped together by their creators, and by their size.  There doesn't necessarily seem to be a hierarchy to it.
• The gallery seems, to me, more like a boutique for crafts rather than a gallery.  The works they sell aren't fine art as much as they are utilitarian and decorative objects.

Conceptual Considerations

• The gallery serves to bring art to an otherwise conservative town by finding and capitalizing on the middle ground between the two.
• The patrons of the gallery could start at any point in the gallery and it wouldn't affect their viewing experience.
• The sequence of the gallery set up is effective

Visitor Observations

• For visitors of the gallery who are under the age of 25, they may not be interested in the type of product that's being sold at the gallery.  Not everything in the gallery is western themed, or done in a traditional way, but a large majority of it is, and it's become overdone and boring.  One thing that's appealing is the prices, they arent outrageous for a demographic that probably doesn't have a ton of money.
• For the gallery visitors over the age of 25 they would probably be draw to it for the reasons the younger generations aren't.  The gallery has a lot of western themed art, and pieces that are considered more crafty or utilitarian than high art.  I can't think of any reason that those over the age of 25 wouldn't like the gallery
• The visitors could probably share their experience of the gallery with others, if they had a reason to.  It's not a white wall gallery that has an implied behavioral expectation, its a more relaxed space that a patron could talk in.
• The owner made it sound like profit was his main objective, which I understand, but it seems to come at the cost of exhibiting contemporary art in favor of selling the same tried and tired thing that's done everywhere else.